The problem with advice

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

Edith Zimmerman has some wise things to say about advice:

After editing an advice column for two years I’ve decided that there is no such thing as advice. There are only problems and the ways people handle them. Advice, on the other hand, is when you hear a description of someone else’s problem and then tell the person something about yourself. Hopefully whatever you say is funny or interesting, but it has little to do with actually helping anyone. It may seem or feel like it does, but there are always more variables than we’ll ever be able to see or understand, and best case scenario you’re pressing on the problem a little bit in a way that engages the problem-haver.

One of the things I like about Action Storming is that it pushes out advice in favour of people owning their ideas and trying them out rather than trying to write scripts for others.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

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